Thousands of believers are expected on Wednesday, November 20, at the Bistrita Monastery in Costeşti commune, at the feast of Saint Gregory the Decapolitanan occasion with which they will be able to worship his relics located in the place of worship.
The representatives of the Archdiocese of Râmnicu said that the religious services will start on Tuesday evening, with the vigil service which will be performed by a council of hierarchs from the country and abroad, and that during the day on Wednesday the reliquary with the saint’s relics will be removed from the church .
“Every year, at the feast of Saint Gregory the Decapolitan, many believers arrive to worship and ask for the intercession of prayers before the Most Holy Trinity. Due to the number of believers present, the reliquary with his holy relics will be placed in a canopy, under the dome of the monastery’s bell tower”, the Archdiocese’s press release states.
Celebrated by the Orthodox Church on November 20, Saint Gregory the Decapolitan was known during his lifetime as a miracle worker. Born around the year 780, in Isauria (Asia Minor), of devout Orthodox parents, he dedicated most of his life to the defense of Orthodoxy and the honoring of the holy icons in Constantinople, Asia Minor, Rome and Macedonia. And after his death, in the year 842, his reputation was preserved, and many sick people came to seek healing at his tomb in a monastery in Constantinople, so that his disciples took his relics out of the ground and placed them in the church for the worship and help of all.
At the Bistriţa Monastery, the relics of Grigorie the Decapolitan arrived in 1498, after Ban Barbu Craiovescu, the founder of the monastery, bought them with a lot of money from a Turkish priest who allegedly got hold of them after they were brought to parts of the Danube at the conquest of Byzantium by the Turks. These are still kept whole today in the monastic place in Vâlcea, in a silver casket made in Braşov, in 1656.
Photo – wikipedia.org
Source: www.cotidianul.ro
